1 In Media Res

The blast awakened Jaera from here reverie. She looked around, for an instant unsure of what she was doing in such a place. The wounded lay clustered around their artillery pieces, her lieutenants doing their best to maintain some semblance of order among the troops. Every few seconds a flower of red bloomed in the marsh in which they fought, followed by a wave of pressure and heat across her face. She would have been deafened by the noise, had her ears not been ringing for the last few minutes.

She had thoroughly underestimated her enemy.  The scouting reports had assured her that it had just been a supply convoy headed to relieve the border town of Warren. The aerial photography had shown just four armored trucks escorting half a dozen sixteen wheelers. She had expected them to be filled with some combination of food, ammunition, and other essentials, they were not.

With just over two hundred well trained and fanatically loyal legionnaires, Jaera may have been able to handle the three to one odds, had her opponent just stuck to the standard playbook. She had laid her trap well, circumventing the town under cover of night and entrenching her position to the Northeast. Intercepted radio traffic had held no indication that they had been spotted. The first ten minutes of the battle had proceeded according to plan. Using the classic Sperovian tactics which had carried it through the Foundation and Succession wars, her Engineers had blown the bridge and disabled the rear vehicle, before her sharpshooters had initiated contact. As expected, the Midlanders had taken cover behind their vehicles and returned fire.

Jaera had just ordered the first salvo of mortar fire on her unsuspecting prey when a shout had gone up from the rear: "contact at six!". The enemy had somehow known their position and disgorged about a hundred soldiers further up the highway, coordinating a pincer attack. Jaera smiled ruefully as an image came to her mind; a cat about to grab a baby hare in its jaws, only to be swept up by an eagle. Seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. While her enemy was not battle hardened, they were still formidable, composed of volunteer militiamen from all over the "free states", hailing from as far afield as Colorado and Montana.

She grinned maniacally. The comedy, this theatre of the banal and the horrifying, war.

Jaera steeled herself. She was not a footsoldier or a civilian. Her family and status wouldn't matter one bit to a passing bullet or grenade, but if she were captured and recognized she might be ransomed or executed on tv, but she didn't want to wait to find out which.

She quickly surveyed the landscape. As hopeless as the battle had seemed to her a moment ago, she might be able to salvage this. No more than thirty of her troops were casualties so far and many of those were just in shock from the initial barrage of fire. She pulled her flare pistol from its holster and held it aloft. "IF YOU HAVE LEGS TO STAND ON, ASSAULT NORTH!" she bellowed, raking the field for her Lieutenants, Elias and Mathias. They were outnumbered overall, but the convoy still had the bulk of that force. The easier enemy was actually the one currently carrying out the surprise assault. She fired a flare over the heads of the enemy and continued issuing commands, running up and down the line to assure that no one broke or gave in to fear.

"Mortars, load short fuse, fire ten degrees, give me an opening! Company A, flank left and get us covering fire! Marksmen, focus fire on their heavies…" She saw the faces of her people rise when they saw that their leader, the one they had pledged themselves to almost three years ago, still believed they could survive. Maybe even win. Jaera had almost reached Mathias when a sudden force threw her backwards and aloft. All she felt was a sharp pain in her face and chest before everything went black.

Flashes. Snippets of memory flitted before her eyes. A field of green grass and spring flowers. Her hand brushed over a lily. She slowly passed her hand over the stalk, then knelt down to breath in its fragrance. The sun shone down, casting its warmth over her face. A feeling of calm and happiness washed over her and she closed her eyes to take it in. A breath in, a breath out. Then the warmth was suddenly gone, she opened her eyes to find herself in a vast stone room. She felt the cool stone underneath her feet. She was kneeling with a dozen others, the stone cold under her right knee as it pressed against the smooth marble. A person clad in grey robes intoned something she couldn't quite make out, "...pledge allegiance to the State… and will… your life…" She murmured the words she could remember. This image too faded away, and she saw nothing, she felt nothing. A year may have passed, or maybe a few minutes, she couldn't tell anymore. A deep sleep overtook her...